Save the Date! Mark your Calendars! VOTE YES September 30, 2006 for the Touro Bouligny Security District proposition to provide your neighborhood with a 24-hour patrol service and foot patrol on Magazine St. on Saturdays.
In the Spring 2005, every neighborhood property owner was surveyed about setting up a Security District and funding by a millage assessment. A package of information that addresed:
A. Present Condition of Neighborhood Security,
B. Plans for a Neighborhood Security District,
C. Objectives of the Security District,
D. Benefits of the Security District,
E. Funding for the Security district, and
F. Steps Required to Establish a Security District, and
Two Schedules showing calculations of:
1-Estimated costs for Homestead Exempt Properties, and
2-Estimated costs for Non-Homestead Exempt Properties
was sent to each nighborhood property owner; included in the package was a BLUE CARD addressed and stamped for your YES or NO response on the proposition. (Click on Touro Bouligny Security District Page 1 on the right to see information letter sent in 2005 - Click on Page 2 for the Schedules, Costs for patrol is in parens)
Your overwhelmingly positive responses for this proposition provided the basis to go forward to request legislation to establish the Touro Bouligny Security District. Act No. 77 did this in June 2005. Thank you all who said yes for your decision to support the idea of a Seucrity District.
Yes, there were also NO votes on the proposition but far less in number than the YES votes; the vocabulary of some of the responses were quite graphic, in fact too graphic to be repeated here. Since they did not identify themselves on the BLUE CARD reponses, these same UNKNOWNS are obviously involved in counter effort to dissuade voters to refuse the round-the-clock security service. (The UNKNOWNS have characterized this process as a Sneaky maneuver. Does this appear Sneaky to you?)
If you recently got a postcard in the mail (from an UNKNOWN source) that “puts down” this neighborhood security idea as a cliquish effort of a few (so-called Club) to impose unwarranted security on the entire neighborhood, all of the several hundred of you who responded IN FAVOR should be incensed with being characterized as such. The reality is, you are a very sizable neighborhood group who is indeed concerned about the security in and of your neighborhood.
Another factual stretch on the card is what it will cost for the patrol: $1600 a year! That would be true only IF your property is assessed at $1 million. How many of you are there in that category? (this is not a put-down; there are a few.) There are over 1000 parcels of property (residential and commercial) in the neighborhood, and even by the UNKNOWN source’s own calculation of potential annual funds from the millage of about $356,000 for the Security District, that is less than $1.00 a-day per parcel. Needless to say, most residential properties in Touro Bouligny are assessed for far less value than $1 million. The average is closer to $200,000 or less; so the cost will probably be closer to $0.75 a-day. (The millage planned for the first year is 12.9, and will increase with inflation yearly, if property values do not rise.)
The value of 24-hour security services has been endorsed by many neighborhoods that established security districts, including our nextdoor neighborhood Garden District. And the soon-to-be Twin Brook Security District that will go from Valence to Jefferson and will be our neighbor on the other side.
WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT THIS!
*-24 hour a day, seven days a week security detail specifically for our neighborhhood,
-Saturday foot patrol on Magazine Street,
-Trained officers to monitor safety and deter criminal activity in our neighborhood,
-Access to security personnel to watch you enter your home late at night - just a phone call away,
-Additional security upon request to monitor your house when you are out of town,
-A quick response by security personnel if a crime occurs,
-Keeps neighborhood from being the target of least resistance by criminal elements displaced by security patrols in nearby neighborhoods,
-Enhances quality of life and encourages more pedestrian activity throughout the neighborhood, and
-It is tax-deductible.*
Now more than ever, with the reduced police (NOPD) force and capability, we need to enhance neighborhood security. If any of you want to know what is going on with the police and it’s struggles to put the force on the street, attend the monthly 2nd district meeting of neighborhoods and police (New Orleans Neighborhood Police Association Community Coalition - NONPACC); 3rd Tuesday of month at 7PM at Touro Infirmary - 2nd floor meeting rooms.
The patrol vehicles will be similar to the ones used by the Garden District Security District. If the UNKNOWN wants to call that a pick-up truck, even though it is closer to a SUV, so be it. After all, it is built on a truck chassis.
We’re not UNKNOWN, you know who we are!
VOTE YES on September 30, 2006.